Hollow Moon: A Bleach Tale

Chapter 2: Stranger in a Hero's Skin

After Silas had woken up from his shock at finding out he was now in Ichigo Kurosaki's body, he was treated by Isshin in his room. Isshin was not only Ichigo's father; he also worked at his own clinical hospital as a doctor. He gave Silas some medicine to calm his head and told him he could stay away from school if he wanted. The tall, muscular man with spiky black hair and thin facial hair smacked Silas's arm, warning him not to run out like that again. He then walked out of the room, allowing Silas to consider things.

It took a moment for Silas to truly accept what had happened. All he could recall was that he was speeding down the highway until another driver's incompetence caused him to swerve off the bridge. He couldn't tell if he had died, perhaps having a lucid dream, or was just in hell.

Ideas and theories of people traveling to different universes were always talked about, but he didn't believe in that sort of thing. In his teens, he read things like Japanese manga, Korean manwha, and even Chinese manhua. He knew all about the term "isekai". It was a Japanese word that meant "other world". To be accurate, it was a subgenre of fantasy tropes. Sometimes the main character would be reborn into another world, and sometimes he would appear in someone else's body. The fact of the matter was that Silas was no longer on earth; he was in the world of Bleach, an anime series created by Tite Kubo in the early 2000's.

The series itself took a hiatus until it finally made its debut approximately ten years later. By then, Silas had already stopped watching the show. He decided to finish the manga to see how it ended, but it was to his expectations: the main character defeats the bad guy like always.

The only reason he even watched Bleach as a kid was because the main character differed from mainstream's goofy heroes. That main character, Ichigo, was just a teenage boy who started off being able to see spirits, known as Souls. Little did he know, he was actually part Soul Reaper, a spiritual samurai that could use spiritual powers to provide them with various abilities.

Why Silas ever let his son get into that sort of anime mind-boggled him. Just as he remembered his son, he paused in bed. The idea that he was away from his family hurt his heart.

'Just what is this place?' he thought. 'Will I ever see my family again? Did I die, and God is punishing me?'

All these thoughts rummaged through his head. His emotions plagued him as he tried to find some level of understanding of what had happened to him. The only logical explanation he could muster was the events that occurred just moments before his car crashed.

He had woken up like normal, eaten breakfast, and then gotten laid off. Piecing together those things, the only thing that connected was how he treated his son, who asked something about Bleach, and his aforementioned prayer. But he still couldn't find an answer as to why he was sent to this world and in the main character's body.

It was right of him to believe that he was in the world of Bleach since everything lined up. He looked like Ichigo, Ichigo's father looked like what he remembered, and even the room he was in was an exact replica from the series. There was nothing refuting the idea that he wasn't anywhere else. Hell might have been one, but he didn't like the thought of burning for all eternity in brimstone and ashes. There was only one way to escape something like that, and that was to repent of your sins and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.

But the question still remained: why was he here in the first place?

• • •

The next day, Silas was seen walking across a neighbourhood while heading to school. There was truly only one thing he could do, and that was play out the events that would unfold in Ichigo's story. Ichigo was just a teenager, about fifteen at the time. He was around five feet and eight inches; his mother was dead; and he had two younger sisters named Karin and Yuzu.

Apart from that, he also held extraordinary powers with untapped potential. He was essentially every main race in this world and had the aptitude to exceed them all. You name it, and he could more or less do it if he tried. But one of the craziest parts about him was his powers as a Soul Reaper. It wasn't the best nor the strongest ability out there, but it was undoubtedly in the top three—five at the minimum.

Silas recalled faintly how his story went. Since the female character known as Rukia Kuchiki, another Soul Reaper, wasn't around, he speculated that he had arrived somewhere in the beginning of the series. That also meant that Ichigo had yet to manifest his spiritual powers. This was both good and bad for Silas.

The series' antagonist, an infamous Soul Reaper named Sōsuke Aizen, was occasionally spying on Ichigo. That was because Ichigo was going to be used as another one of his test subjects. If one truly thought about it, the series could have been named after him since all of the main battles Ichigo fought in were planned out by Aizen. Many fans were awestruck to find out after almost three hundred episodes later.

If Silas was going to live his days as Ichigo until he could figure out a way to return to earth, he wasn't going to let anyone push him over. If anything, he was willing to become an antagonist himself if he had to. All for the sake of returning to his family. And why would he want to live out his life as someone else? He was his own person and had loved ones. There was no way he would trade that for some fantasy world that he believed didn't exist.

Now that he was in one, he was going to become strong enough to disrupt whatever kept this world in balance.